This paper investigates the role of technology in the leisure activities of the retired elderly, focusing on the clientele of karaoke restaurants in a Bangkok suburb. Recently, karaoke restaurants have become common among many shopping malls and some of Bangkok’s old quarters. The majority of their clients are elderly persons who spend most of their daytime within these vicinities. On the one hand, this looks like unproductive activity, on the other, this is how elderly persons cope with their excessive spare time. Spending time at karaoke restaurants with people of similar age can be considered as part of their identification in relation to age set. Such activity is particularly interesting because it is situated in digital media environment where karaoke is used as a medium for their collective activity and smartphones as a channel to communicate within group.

 

In the modern world, industrial life, time in human life was separated into binary parts--work and spare time. For working age people, their duties are focused on work time. They spend spare time with leisure activity for de-routinisation. On the contrary, this article argues that, for retire age people, “leisure” activities have become their main duty--quest for time spending--their leisure time become routine activity as work. Thus, digital technology devices such karaoke machine, microphone, or smartphone play the same role as their office equipment.